[Column] Talk with a Fukushima evacuee / “We were deceived.”

I’m just back from Budapest. I successfully met the Fukushima evacuee family and had the extremely valuable talk with the mother in early 30s.
I should have posted it yesterday but I needed to deliberate on what to publish and what not to for her security.

Not so many people have evacuated Fukushima. What made her different ? This is the thing I wanted to know.
The answer was very deep -we don’t know.

They were apart from the very beginning.

When 311 happened, she was in one of the most contaminated areas, where was her home town. Her parents, sister and friends were there.
Interestingly, they are still there.
She has an independent personality but wasn’t an expert of nuclear power or a biologist. She told me when she heard Yamashita said radiation doesn’t come to the smily & happy people, she understand Fukushima people are deceived and all victimized.
She left to the west coast of Japan with her child.
On the other hand, her sister remained there with 4 and 6 years old children. The kids were hospitalized in 2011 though “it has nothing to do with radiation.”.
Even though she asks her sister why they don’t evacuate, the sister replies to her, “Because nothing is dangerous, you are too paranoid to leave Fukushima.” The sister’s husband also says, “It’s more harmful for children not to be able to play outside.”.
The family even takes their children to Kaiseizan park, where is known to be a hotspot. It looks like they are willing to dive into more contaminated zone.

She told me she’s not in touch with her parents, sisters and friends in Fukushima. They can’t understand each other.
They have been sharing the most part of the lives, were given the same information after 311, but some of them realized and acted. Some didn’t.

She said, she doesn’t think she can convince her people.

She became healthy in Europe.

Now she’s planning to move to one of the most stable countries in Europe. She had been there for about a week when I met her.
She told me she turned to be very well.
To me, she still looked a little bit tired. It might be due to the trip to Budapest and the weather. Or she might look so naturally.
but she told me she always felt tired in Japan.
After leaving Fukushima, she moved to the west coast of Japan and to South Western Japan. She is hosted by her friend with her child.
Her child is very healthy fortunately, but the doctor diagnosed her to have thyroid nodules and cysts. The result of blood test was getting worse and worse.
The atmospheric dose was also in the increasing trend. Recently she measured 0.17 μSv/h in-house.
She said, she buys rice only in west coast of Japan. She knows the farmer in person. She told me she can’t trust other products.
However, she must eat other things, water, milk, meat, vegetables etc. She said she buys vegetables only from the farmers who she knows in person, but she cannot control everything she eats because there are too many varieties. Also, she can’t afford to checking other nuclides than Cesium-134/137. It’s almost impossible to take care about food perfectly for the rest of the life.

Her thoughts about Fukushima and Japan.

She sounded scared of her own hometown and Japan itself. She says, one of her friends is a cucumber farmer. The friend was angry about “harmful rumor”. The friend wasn’t angry about Tepco to have caused 311, but about the consumers to avoid their products for the “unscientific fear”.
What interested me was her saying if she was evil and in power, she’d try to lead the country to the war so the death rate, birthrate, demographic statistics would be all messed up. She actually sensed something about the recent victory of LDP in the election.
She was lucky to have found the chance to move to Europe. I didn’t ask her how because it’s her privacy.
For the question that what we could do for Japanese to want to come to Europe, she said supplying information and showing them options would be the way.
When she came from Japan to an airport of Europe, most of the other passengers were Japanese but she was stopped and asked various questions, such as the purpose of visiting, length of stay etc.. This is her observation, other people might have been asked too, but she felt like it was only her. She also said she felt like it was because her passport says “From Fukushima”. She didn’t have a radiation test at the airport, but something made her feel like “They might be watching people coming from Fukushima.”. It was a scary experience for her.
At the end, I agreed her saying radiation researchers should take care about their health. They go to the highly contaminated areas frequently. We need their information but please take care of their own health.

About

Fukushima Diary is the news site of a corporation Fukushima Diary SRL and all the articles are written by Iori Mochizuki.
He was in Yokohama, where is about 300km from Fukushima nuclear plant when 311 took place.
This site started when he was forced to collect information to decide to go or not to go.
At this moment, this is the only news site in the world on Fukushima issue written in English, by a Japanese citizen who was there on 3/11/2011.

Several articles are published daily and all the posts are about the current Fukushima plant situation, on-going health problems among Japanese people, media blackout situation and global effect etc.. Most of them are not covered by mass media all around the world.